Communicatio
Volume 2, 2015
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania
Scientia Publishing House
Theoretical Studies András Vajda
Folk Culture on the Internet: Use, Context, and Function . . . . 7 Research – Case Studies
Nóra Schleicher, Györgyi Rétfalvi
Media and Information Literacy Policies in Hungary . . . . 49 Gyöngyvér Tőkés, Anca Velicu
“I Learned All by Myself”: Romanian Young People’s Self-Perception of Their Digital Competence . . . . 67 Research Notes
Katalin Fehér
Adaptation Techniques in Digital Environment . Collective Brand
Engagement via Camera Drone/Video-Game Design . . . . 95 Orsolya Gergely
Mothers Online . The Content Analysis of the Mothers from Csík (Ciuc) Facebook Group . . . . 105 Book Reviews
Zsófia Gion
Peep Behind the Scenes: Hanga András (ed .), Kommunikációs terek . . . . 137 Andrea Molnár
Sam Leith: “YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?” . . . . 141
Call for Articles: Special Issue 2016: New Media – Mobile Era . . . . 145
Folk Culture on the Internet:
Use, Context, and Function
1András Vajda
PhD, lecturer, Sapientia University,
Faculty of Technical and Human Sciences, Târgu Mureş, Department of Applied Social Sciences, Târgu Mureş/Corunca 1C
vajdandras@yahoo .com
Abstract. What happens if folk tradition is not externalized in books and archives but is uploaded to the World Wide Web? What is the guiding intention of the user who deposits the products of folk culture and local tradition to the Internet? Is this a case of patrimonialization or mere archiving? Should we view the function of the externalization as communicative (informative), performative or depositive (safe-keeping)? Does the new medium lead to any change on the level of the habits and functions of use? In other words: is the new medium capable of radically transforming folk tradition and its use in the same way in which mass-media (primarily television) did?
This study attempts to explore these questions . It also openly assumes its experimental character . My interest does not primarily lie with the medium and technology but with the people and the society that uses them . Instead of the local culture of Internet use, I will offer here an analysis of the use of local (folk) culture through the medium of the Internet . In other words, my focus is on the way in which we use the Internet “for integrating folk culture in our present .”
Keywords: folk tradition, folk culture, heritage, invented tradition, rewriting tradition, digitization, Internet usage .
According to Vilmos Keszeg, the epoch is an institution that defines the rules of the organization of everyday life, the strategies of contact between people, and the mentality of the individual, the group, and society . Every epoch has
1 The first, shorter version of this study was previously published under the title A népi kultúra használatának módjai és kontextusai a világhálón (Modes and Contexts of the Use of Folk Culture on the Internet) in Jakab Albert Zsolt–Kinda István (eds): Aranykapu. Tanulmányok Pozsony Ferenc tiszteletére . KJNT–Szentendrei Néprajzi Múzeum–Székely Nemzeti Múzeum, Kolozsvár 2015 . The present text is the extended and slightly revised English version of my study entitled Népi kultúra a világhálón. Használat, kontextus, funkció, published in Replika 2015 . 1–2 . When finishing this study, I received the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .
its characteristic physiology, metabolism, and rhythm . Historians of literature have adopted the term “rhetoric of the epoch” for the infiltration of thematic, ideological, rhetorical, and communicational characteristics of an epoch into the texts (Keszeg, 2011: 36–37) . The narrative schemes and the productive models that are characteristic for an epoch represent transformational systems (Keszeg, 2011: 38) .
McLuhan and his followers have distinguished four epochs in the history of communication technologies . These are primary orality, literacy, book printing, and secondary orality, which is mainly determined by mass-media that primarily organizes itself around television (McLuhan, 1964) . However, according to Zoltán Szűts, with the rapid development of the Internet and the integration of augmented reality into our communication, we are now entering a new phase, the epoch of touch, which aims at dissolving the previous epochs into itself, thereby leading to a high intensity collaboration of hearing, sight, and touch (Szűts, 2013: 203). In this new context, our ideas about information and its storage, obtaining, and transmission (or, if you like, about knowledge and its attainment) are continually changing and being reorganized . The habits and rites of recording, storage, and retrieval are also changing, which in turn changes the horizons and perspectives of local culture, the (re)production, conservation, and consumption of folk tradition, as well as of the construction and communication of local heritage and identity .
The traditional culture of a specific region (its folk culture, or cultural heritage) is found and localized increasingly often on the Internet, on the websites of regional associations and clubs, tourism agencies, local governments, cultural institutions, or research centres, on file-sharing websites, blogs, and forums. In brief, the Internet is becoming the new medium and public space of traditional culture (and cultural heritage) .
This change of medium prompts the reformulation of several questions and the introduction of new hypotheses, starting points, and frameworks of interpretation and analysis . These should apply to the nature of the altered contexts and to the problems of the habits of use, creating intentions and meaning-generating mechanisms associated with the texts and representations about folk traditions which result from this process . Simultaneously, they also impose the need for the description and analysis of new types of routines, such as online searching, the tracing back of information, saving, forwarding, Facebook liking, etc .
Thus, the question essentially becomes: how will we get to be able to digitalize and thereby save our (folk) culture for the future (see Szűts, 2013: 11)? What kinds of politics for the cultivation of cultural heritage are being formed within the new media environment? How does folk culture and local heritage appear on the Internet? Why is it, in the first place, that contents associated with folk culture and folk tradition are so popular also on the Internet?
But what happens if folk tradition is not externalized in books and archives but is uploaded to the World Wide Web? What is the guiding intention of the user who deposits the products of folk culture and local tradition to the Internet?
Is this a case of patrimonialization or mere archiving? Should we view the function of the externalization as communicative (informative), performative, or depositive2 (safe-keeping)? Does the new medium lead to any change on the level of the habits and functions of use? In other words: is the new medium capable of radically transforming folk tradition and its use in the same way in which mass- media (primarily television) did?
This study attempts to explore these questions . It also openly assumes its experimental character . My interest does not primarily lie with the medium and technology but with the people and the society that uses them . Instead of the local culture of Internet use, I will offer here an analysis of the use of local (folk) culture through the medium of the Internet . In other words, my focus is on the way in which we use the Internet “for integrating folk culture in our present”3 (Bíró, 1987: 26) .
0. Folk Culture and (Folk) Tradition
After its birth as an academic subject, ethnography has confidently traced the limits of its field. The scientific discipline of ethnography took as its object of study folk culture and limited it to peasant culture .4 This situation is made even more complicated by the fact that the demarcation of its field has prevailed not only on the social but also on the chronological level . Ethnographical researches have focused on the ancestral and on the past .5 The contemporary phenomena of folk
2 For the interpretation of these concepts, see Assmann, 2008, p . 216 .
3 The translation of the Hungarian citations in the study belongs to the author (A .V .) .
4 To this day, ethnography is characterized by a degree of terminological uncertainty . Besides the terminology used above, the terms “peasant culture” and “popular culture” are also employed . The former is, according to Tamás Hofer, a “more strictly and clearly delimited version” of folk culture (Hofer, 1994: 233) . By contrast, the term “popular culture” indicates a difference in perspective . On the mental map of the researchers, on the popular side, the clear demarcations are drawn between the levels of culture, and, on the side of folk cultures, between the different groups of people and the various ethnicities (Hofer, 1994: 240) . However, their common element is that both concepts define “in contrast to the «high» or «learned» level of culture that which they view as «folk»,
«popular», «non-elite» culture” (Hofer, 1994: 134). Hofer concludes his meticulous analysis of the dichotomy between the two concepts with the statement: “the terminological flow between different scientific fields and due to translations also between languages, in many cases with lesser or larger changes of the original meanings, is increasingly accelerated” . Thus, “a major portion of the domain of meaning carried by the concept of popular culture that has been developed within the Anglo-French tradition is somehow ( . . .) integrated into our concepts of peasant culture and folk culture and contributes to their modernisation as if behind the scenes” (Hofer, 1994: 246–247) . 5 Vilmos Voigt stated the following about this phenomenon: “The uninterrupted presence of
the phantasmagorical «search for the ancestors» is also very characteristic for the Hungarian conception of tradition” (Voigt, 2007: 11) .
culture have also been left outside the scope of ethnographical studies . However, from the 1960s, this paradigm started to become increasingly problematic . On the one hand, researchers started to ask the question: who is the folk? Already in 1965, Alen Dundes argued that “folk” can refer to “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor” (Dundes, 1956: 2) . That is to say, we can apply this term to many different groups (from factory workers to Internet users) which can also be included within the scope of ethnographical research . On the other hand, ethnographers have also redefined the character of the popular knowledge (folklore) and the tradition (traditio) which should constitute the objects of their studies . As early as the 1930s, Alfred Schütz focused his interest on everyday life (Niedermüller, 1981: 192), but ethnographical research continued to favour high days for a long time . Mihály Hoppál calls attention to the fact that, even in the 1970s, one of the most established representatives of Hungarian folkloristics, Vilmos Voigt, “although ( . . .) emphasizing the collective character of folklore, considers its artful characteristics, the «aesthetics of folklore», to be of primary interest for research” (Hoppál, 1982: 330) .
In his synthesis of the results of Hungarian ethnographical researches in Romania, Vilmos Keszeg also concludes that it “has turned folk culture into its object of study on the basis of a peculiar selection . The criteria for this selection have been that the studied object should be ancestral (as opposed to generally known present-day phenomena), it should have a peasant or rural character (as opposed to being urban, official), and it should be aesthetic (as opposed to objects barely containing any aesthetic value), festive, and spectacular (as opposed to the everyday in appearance), oral (as opposed to the scriptural and recorded), text- and genre-centred (as opposed to the discursive habits of everyday communication, which follow more relaxed genre norms), as well as national (as opposed to that which does not have ethnic characteristics)” (Keszeg, 1995: 110) .6
Some western authors argue that nowadays the “local” is increasingly becoming the new folk culture (Storey, 2003: 116; Noyes, 2009: 245) . Folk culture (or traditional culture) is local not only in the sense that it is generated locally – i .e ., it has been long embedded in the everyday life of the local society – but also because it is always used locally . Thus, several cultural elements are in use today within local societies which can be qualified as borrowed within these contexts, but they are a part of local culture in the sense specified above.
We are dealing with similar difficulties when trying to specify the meaning of tradition, which is pervaded by contradictions both in the scientific and in the everyday use of the term . According to Dorothy Noyes, tradition can be interpreted as communication (handing over and receiving), ideology, and a form of property (Noyes, 2009: 234) . In the interpretation of Edward Shils, it is traditum, that is to say, it represents everything that is handed over by the past to the present (Shils,
6 Emphasis by the original author .
1981: 12) . According to both of these views, the primary role of tradition consists in the preservation and transmission of knowledge .
In his essay about the necessity of our habits, Odo Marquard describes tradition as the primary presence of history, which is nothing else than “the sum total of habits,” or – in the words of Herman Lübbe – that which “is valid not because of its proven correctness, but because we are incapable of being without it” (see Marquard, 2001: 188–189). This definition refers to the totality of life, or, if you wish, to everyday life . Tradition is not only the totality of actions, gestures, objects, and texts related to high days and celebrations but also everything that is human and makes life liveable .
In December 2012, Vilmos Keszeg organized an international scientific conference in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), bearing the title “Who does tradition belong to? And what is its use? Tradition between culture, users, and traders” .7 In his invitation to the conference, he states that three paradigms have succeeded each other in 20th century Europe in the domain of the interpretation of tradition . The first paradigm approached the subject from the side of the cultural context (typology, range, morphology, structure, function, and the historical approach to tradition), the second interpreted tradition from a sociological perspective, focusing on the instruments of its application – or, in other words, on the attitudes toward tradition –, and the third paradigm, currently in the process of establishing itself, consists in the patrimonialization of culture . According to the author, each of these paradigms stresses different aspects of tradition .
The researches led by Vilmos Keszeg in Cluj-Napoca use tradition as an operative concept . They “do not relate this concept to subsisting relics of an earlier developmental epoch of culture and society but use it for the designation of objects, knowledge, practices, mentality, and attitudes received from the users of culture within our environment” (Keszeg, 2014: 10) . Consequently, tradition 1 . establishes a community, 2 . produces memory, and 3 . serves a biographical function (Keszeg, 2014: 10–12) .
In one of his studies, Vilmos Voigt expresses his opinion that, just as the concept of folk culture, tradition is also strongly ethnicized . In his own words,
“as for the notorious Hungarian «conceptualization of tradition», the systematic use of the concept establishes itself in our culture in the age of reform, after some preliminary interpretations (such as György Bessenyei’s conception of history) . The study of Ferenc Kölcsey entitled Nemzeti hagyományok (“National traditions”) (1826) in fact maintains a still-valid approach, according to which Hungarian «folk traditions» are simultaneously the traditions of the «Hungarian nation»” (Voigt, 2007: 10).
7 “A qui appartient la tradition? A quoi sert-elle? La tradition entre culture, utilisateur et entrepreneur” . 6–7 décembre 2012, Cluj-Napoca, Romania .
Attila Paládi-Kovács calls attention to the fact that in the works of the researchers devoted to the domain of folk culture “the term «tradition» (...) often appears as a synonym for the folk culture stemming from the age before the Settlement of the Magyars in Hungary, which survives according to its own laws, sometimes transforming and renewing itself within the process” (Paládi-Kovács, 2004: 4) . Hermann Bausinger writes about the nature of this tradition in the following way:
“according to the conception that has become widespread also among the folk during the previous century, and even reaches into the present in some residual forms, that which is historically prior is also ahistorical, and can be viewed as nature itself” (Bausinger, 1995: 102–103) . In one of her studies, Aleida Assmann also points to the fact that tradition is rediscovered and interpreted in the 18th century as nature (Assmann, 1997: 608–625) .
It is the romantic, aestheticized, and archaized definition of folk culture and tradition that has become embedded in common belief . However, which is almost even more important than this fact: local communities have begun to view certain elements of their own culture as tradition .8 One of my recent researches on the perspective used in the chapters on folk culture of village monographs written by local authors has led to the conclusion that these handbooks, which are based on the romantic conception of folk culture, established at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and on the monographic study of certain domains (popular customs, folk poetry, folk architecture, farming), often contain mere general statements instead of presenting local characteristics (Vajda, 2015a) . The majority of the folk traditions represented on the Internet also reflects this same perspective.
1. Methods and Contexts of the Use of Folk Traditions
In one of his studies, Hermann Bausinger describes how, at the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the choir of a south German town, Hayingen, the local women appeared in a costume about which, although it was defined by them as traditional, they admitted that they wore it that day for the first time. It has only become clear later to the author that the elements of this costume have been ordered by them on the basis of the descriptions of a local pastor from a century ago about the then-current native costumes (Bausinger, 1983: 434) . A similar work was conducted in the 1960s in Voivodeni (Vajdaszentivány), a village that lies only 20 km from the town of Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely), by Pál Demeter . As a result, the local dance ensemble presented the still popular local folk dances at the county and national stage of the competition Cântarea
8 As Hermann Bausinger puts it: “Nowadays even simple peasants view tradition in part consciously as tradition” (Bausinger, 1995: 104) .
României (“Praise of Romania”), dressed in the costume designed by him .9 In this case, too, the need for the design had arisen from necessity since the village did not have any living tradition for dressing at that date, and only some elderly people had still preserved in their wardrobe a couple of sets of native costumes for funerals . The women’s costume of the local dance ensemble, which is still in use today, has been designed by Demeter on the basis of the clothes of a 96-year- old woman. In Dumbrăvioara (Sáromberke), a village that lies halfway between Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) and Reghin (Szászrégen), for the occasion of celebrating the renovation and equipment upgrade of the local culture centre, eight pairs of “native costumes” have been bought for the folk dance ensemble of the elementary school . Since neither the representatives of the local government nor the company commissioned for the acquisition had any documentation at its disposal regarding the local costume, they searched for models on the Internet . The decision makers reviewed the photos of Transylvanian native costumes and folk dance ensembles found on social media and file-sharing websites, as well as the “native costume catalogues” of Transylvanian craftsmen, also accessible through the Internet . Finally, the elements of the costume have been ordered from folk craftsmen working in Odorheiu Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely) .
1.1. Folk Traditions in a New Context10
The above described phenomena related to the use of tradition have been termed as folklorism11 within the scholarly literature . The concept was used for the first time by sociologist Peter Heinz. In his encyclopaedia article written in 1958, he designated as “folklorism” the various nativistic movements and their unrealistic and romantic character, also citing as its main example the reintroduction of forgotten, “uncomfortable costumes” of the past . According to Hans Moser, a researcher of popular customs, folklorism is a form of appearance of certain elements of folk culture, which are forced into contexts where they do not originally belong . An example of this is the use of native costumes on the stage (see Bausinger, 1983: 435) . According to Vilmos Voigt, the concept also encompasses the period of the early discovery of folk culture. He identifies the earliest forms of folklorism with the French Revolution, German romanticism, and the Russian Narodnik movement, and differentiates between older and newer
9 The folk dances of Voivodeni (Vajdaszentivány) were presented on the stage also by the ensemble Maros during this period, and they can be found until today in the repertoires of many professional and amateur folk dance ensembles .
10 The title is an adaptation . For the original, see Zoltán Bíró, József Gagyi, János Péntek (eds):
Néphagyományok új környezetben. Tanulmányok a folklorizmus köréből . Kriterion Könyvkiadó, Bucharest, 1987 .
11 For the concept of folklorism, see Voigt, 1970; 1979; 1987a, Bausinger, 1983; Gusev, 1983;
Karnoouh, 1983 .
tendencies, introducing the concept of neofolklorism (Voigt, 1970; 1979; 1987b) . In addition to this, Gusev distinguishes two socio-cultural types of folklorism . These are everyday folklorism and ideological folklorism (Gusev, 1983: 441) . As for Bausinger, he summarizes the characteristics of folklorism in the following way: 1. The phenomena of folklorism are created artificially. They do not stem from tradition but are its outgrowths . 2 . Their incentive is external, and they are also directed externally, in the form of spectacles and presentations that also take into account the expectations of the viewer . 3 . These phenomena are closely associated with the agencies of the cultural industry, including show business and tourism . 4 . Folklorism can be viewed as a form of applied ethnography, in the case of which we are dealing with the feedback of the results of ethnographic research (Bausinger, 1983: 435) .
In 1987, in Transylvania, the Hungarian-language publishing house Kriterion issued a volume of studies (Bíró et alii, 1987) dealing with the question whether folk culture, as it enters new/changed contexts, “can still be regarded as a creation that transmits traditional meanings, or one that now produces only dubious (?) values” . “How do the elements that are disseminated from the decomposing paradigm of traditional culture find their place within new sintagma?” – this was the question asked by the editors (Péntek, 1987: 5) . In his study, which can be regarded as the theoretical introduction of the volume, Zoltán Bíró argues that we are dealing with folklorism when “an element or group of elements of folk culture enters a context that is alien and different from its original one ( . . .), changes its meaning in this alien context and becomes different from what it represented within the system of folk culture” (Bíró, 1987: 31–32) . Then, the author distinguishes four basic types of folklorism: scientific folklorism, representational folklorism, everyday folklorism, and aesthetic folklorism (Bíró, 1987: 33–44). According to him, scientific folklorism is the situation in which folk culture survives in the net of scholarly interpretations . “Thus, when we are speaking about saving and safe-keeping, we are in fact dealing with a process of folklorism and a meaning shift that is associated with it. (...) The scientific approach always means that we are putting the elements of folk culture into an alien context .” (Bíró, 1987: 35 .) At the same time, the material that is discovered and published by the researcher can come to a new life of its own and be put to many different uses, some of which lie far from the original intentions of the scientific research.12 Bíró includes in the category of representational folklorism the book series on folk art placed on the bookshelf, the hanging of folk carpets and jugs on living room walls, the presentation of popular culture on the stage, the exhibitions of folk art, and the “houses of regional traditions” . These gestures and objects all express the idea that “folk culture belongs to us” (Bíró, 1987: 36) . Representational folklore doas not only have its craftsmen but also its ideologues
12 For this topic, see also Keszeg, 2005, pp . 315–339 .
(scholarly specialists) who select the elements of folk culture that they place before us and teach us how to view them . This entire process can best be described as consumption (Bíró, 1987: 38) .
In the case of everyday folklorism, folk culture enters into an alien context by starting to function not as a system but as an instrument that, although serves the attempts of the individual to explain himself or herself, also creates an opposition: the individual is conscious of the fact that there are others besides him or her who do not believe in this culture, or even look down upon him or her because of it (Bíró, 1987: 39–43) . As for aesthetic folklorism, it is, in fact, the classic form of folklorism, in the case of which we are dealing with the “entering of folk art and poetry into «high» culture” (Bíró, 1987: 43). The primary scene for this kind of use of folk traditions is the studio of the artist and the theatrical stage, and the context of its performance is the exhibiton, the local, regional, or national festival, and the creative contest .
1.2. The Revitalization of Folk Traditions and the Invented Tradition International scholarly literature uses the term “invented tradition,” as introduced by Eric Hobsbawm, for the designation of the process of tradition creation that revitalizes or even invents “traditional” folk costumes (e .g . the Scottish kilt) .13 In Hungarian scholarly literature, “tradition creation” (hagyományteremtés) is also often used (see Hofer and Niedermüller, 1987; Mohay, 1997) . According to its definition, the “invented tradition” is an answer to novel situations, which takes the form of a reference to past forms and situations (Hobsbawm, 1983: 2) or a process of formalization and ritualization characterized by the reference to the past (Hobsbawm, 1983: 4) . The author distinguishes three types of invented traditions . Some 1 . reinforce or symbolize social community, others 2 . reinforce or legitimize institutions, statuses, and power relations, and 3 . the third category is primarily aimed at socialization into a system of beliefs and values or into a behavioural model (Hobsbawm, 1983: 9) .
In another study, Hobsbawm deals with the “mass production of traditions” . His starting point is the premise according to which, although the invention of traditions can be viewed as a universal phenomenon, from the 1870s we can see an accelerated emergence of novel traditions, both in an official and an unofficial setting, a process that lasted for half a century. The officially invented novel traditions have been introduced by the state and used for its purposes as political traditions, while the unofficially invented traditions can be viewed as social institutions created by formally organized groups without any political agenda, which nonetheless needed novel instruments to assure and express their unity and to regulate their internal system of relationships (Hobsbawm, 1987: 127) .
13 For its analysis, see Trevor-Roper, 1983, pp . 15–41 .
Hobsbawm calls our attention to three main innovations in his analysis of the tradition-creating process of the French Third Republic: 1 . it transformed education into a secular correspondent of the Church and made it into an instrument for the propagation of republican principles, 2 . it invented public ceremonies, and 3 . started the mass-production of memorial monuments (Hobsbawm, 1987: 137–
139) . Although the author himself only mentions it later, in another context, we can also include here the creation of ritual spaces (Hobsbawm, 1987: 179) .
At the same time, Hobsbawm also emphasizes three further aspects of invented traditions . First, one has to distinguish between durable and transitory innovations. Second, the invented traditions are “associated with specific classes or social strata,” and, although a bidirectional process in theory, their adoption is “characterized by a trickle-down effect” . As invented traditions are adopted, they are also being transformed, but the “historical origin remains visible” . The third aspect is the parallel existence of “invention” and “spontaneous formation”
(Hobsbawm, 1987: 178–181) .
The primary context of invented tradition consists in the (national) celebration and the memorial ritual (see Connerton, 1997: 7–75; Fejős, 1996: 125–142).
The revitalization of folk tradition can be viewed as a similar process . On the basis of the data available to them, the local or the central (political and/or intellectual) elites create an ideal type of folk traditions, thereby also creating the “representative” folk traditions of a given community (settlement, region, or nation) . Thus, tradition is removed from the medium that created it and, from being local, it becomes national . Some early Hungarian examples of this are the thatched-roof inn presented at the Paris Exhibit of 1867, the northern Hungarian and Transylvanian houses shown at the Vienna Exhibit of 1873, the 15 peasant rooms showcased to the public at the 1885 Budapest National Exhibition, or the Hungarian village presented at the Millennium Exhibition (Sisa, 2001: 46–
50). Because this process and its final result is all too similar to the story of the Scottish kilt, we must view the revitalization of folk traditions also as invented tradition . Representative/invented folk tradition often also becomes an integral part of ideological constructions and fulfils a function in the construction of national consciousness .14 This is the reason why it is often accused, and not entirely without any justification, of nationalism.
1.3. The Rehabilitation of Folk Tradition. Heritage
As Vilmos Keszeg writes in his introductory study to the conference volume of the above-mentioned symposium, in the 1960s, a new term is introduced in Europe, that of heritage, which is soon extended from architectural and natural goods to
14 An example of this is the Romanian dance performed with sticks, called the Căluş, which was included on the list of the UNESCO in 2005. For its analysis, see Ştiucă, 2014, pp. 42–52.
cultural goods, and even introduces a new field of studies (Heritage Studies) . But is it not merely the case – asks the author – that this term of “cultural heritage”
only expresses a specifically western European cultural attitude that enacts the redistribution of cultural goods and their showcasing for strangers through patrimonialization (Keszeg, 2014: 12–13)? In another passage, he explains: “the concept of cultural heritage appeared in Europe in the 1970s . It was then that people became aware of the fact that they should attend to, secure, and musealize those elements of culture that are no longer preferred by the users for some reason . This is a turning point in the history of European mentality because there is a difference between the concept of tradition and that of heritage . Tradition refers to the values used and voluntarily transmitted through the generations, while heritage is a legal concept which emphasizes that posterity has a right to access all that has been worked out and accumulated by the predecessors, but that has been removed from everyday use . The preservation of heritage and the access to it have to be guaranteed by the law” (Keszeg, 2015) . On her turn, Máiréad Nic Craith argues that the concept of heritage has enough plasticity for us to interpret it in several different ways, a fact that is also reflected by the variety of its translations into different European languages. Thus, it is difficult to imagine that we could speak of a common European heritage and a common conception of it (Craith, 2012: 11–28) . Regarding the usability of the Western concept of heritage, Gábor Sonkoly comes to the conclusion that “the concept of cultural heritage differs from one level of interpretation to another . It remains a question how these different interpretations can be linked together” (Sonkoly, 2000: 62) . Attila Paládi-Kovács calls attention to the fact that a conceptual duality manifests itself in France . The French use the term patrimoine ethnologique for designating ethnographical heritage, or patrimony, and “they have reserved the word heritage to refer to elite culture and to the protection of monuments” (Paládi-Kovács, 2004: 7) .
Today it almost seems commonplace to talk about the “heritage boom” . This alludes not only to the fact that different heritage forms and discourses have enjoyed an impenetrable proliferation but also to the existence of a process in which heritage increasingly substitutes the concept of culture (Tschofen, 2012:
29). Many authors even define heritage as a form of metaculture (Kirshenblatt- Gimblett, 2004: 52–65; Tauschek, 2011: 49–64) characteristic of the world of globalization . The contributors of a collective volume even speak of regimes of heritage, also alluding thereby to its regulatory character that expresses itself in everyday life (see Bendix, Eggert, and Peselmann, 2012) .
In the interpretation of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, heritage is: 1 . the culture- creating mode of the present nourished by the past; 2 . an industrial branch that produces added value; 3 . it transforms the local product into an export article;
4 . it sheds light on the problematic character of the relationship between its own object and its instruments; 5 . the key for the understanding of heritage lies in
its virtual nature (simulacrum character), the presence or, on the contrary, the complete lack of any actual relevance (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1995: 369) .
We can identify four main directions within the vast scholarly literature . One research trend approaches the subject from the direction of use and asks about the essence of heritage and its social framework . Another approach starts from the perspective of use and studies the transnational or, on the contrary, nation- specific regulations for something to be proclaimed cultural heritage and to be preserved, transmitted, and used as such. How do these regulations influence, on their turn, cultural heritage itself, its different media, and its use? Who is (or are) the owner(s) of cultural heritage, and which institutions operate and control its use? What is the relationship between normative regulations and everyday practice (see Aronsson and Gradén, 2013; Bendix, Eggert, and Peselmann, 2012; Smith, 2004; 2006; Smith and Akagawa, 2009; Therond és Trigona, 2008) . The third direction of research deals with the relationship between heritage (formation) and economy, primarily including the function fulfilled by cultural heritage within the tourism industry (Dawson, 2005; Lyth, 2006; Rowan and Baram, 2004; Thompson Hajdik, 2009) . Finally, the fourth direction analyses the relationship between modern technology and the creation of cultural heritage (patrimonialization), its representation (or visualization), scientific study, and everyday use (Falser and Juneja, 2013; Ioannides and Quak, 2014) .
A specific use of traditions is increasingly often referred to with the concept of heritage (viz . heritage creation) also in Eastern Europe, but primarily by historians and not ethnographers .15 The appearance of the heritage paradigm in East-Central Europe can be related to the accession to the European Union . In any event, the concept has significantly gained in importance in the 1970s both within scientific and political discourses.16 This is also related to the fact that “as major science started to become increasingly personal, and communal, in its character ( . . .), a change of scale has also taken place with the spread of analytical categories situated on lower levels than the global or national”
(Sonkoly, 2009: 199) . The “small community” has become not only a legitimate research category, but these communities have also begun to work out their heritage “in their own right,” complementing regulation from above with local participation (Sonkoly, 2009, 2000) .
15 For this reason, the patrimonialization of folk culture is pushed into the background . When we are talking about the local heritage, we are in fact thinking of the national heritage and reflect upon it in a national context . Our heritage lists also talk about national heritage – for instance, the Magyar Értéktár (Hungarian Repository of Values) is also primarily the Hungarikumok Gyűjteménye (Collection of Hungarikum) –, and the frames of reference for the creation and use of local heritage are not clearly defined yet.
16 For this topic, see, among others, György, Kis, Monok, 2005; Erdősi, 2000, pp. 26–44; Fejős, 2005, pp . 41–48; Husz, 2006, pp . 61–67; Paládi-Kovács, 2004, pp . 1–11; Sonkoly, 2005, pp . 16–22; 2009, pp . 199–209; Frazon, 2010 .
Today, everything that wants to remain in memory and everything that holds something in memory is somehow part of the heritage . One of the driving forces behind the continuous production of heritage is the increase of interest in the past: the local community, as it creates its past, recognizes itself in its relics . This is what makes it possible to sustain the feeling of belonging to a community, since – as Löwenthal puts it – heritage is that which keeps the community alive, and the people of today can express, keep alive, experience, and transmit abstract ideas through the language of heritage (see Husz, 2006) .
If tradition is the past that is embedded in everyday life and is alive in the present, then heritage is a form of past that is also alive in the present, but separated from everyday life. Tradition is tied to a specific place (locality), but heritage transforms the local into national tradition, just as we have seen in the case of the invented tradition . At the same time as it valorizes locality and difference (Sonkoly, 2000: 60–61), heritage also creates a situation of rivalry for them (Sonkoly, 2000: 55–60) .
The construction of heritage always includes a restauration process as well . The restauration of tradition means that political power, as it reinforces the original intention of the use of tradition, puts it to its own use (Hartog, 2006: 156) . On the one hand, heritage can be viewed as intentional tradition, that is to say, the community relates to it as an inherited tradition, in a conscious way . On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as invented tradition, with the sole difference that in this case, along with the political and ideological objectives, economic interests are also strongly present and play a decisive role . The characteristic context for the use (and consumption) of heritage is primarily tourism .
Finally, I would like to cite an important – and thought-provoking – observation made by Vilmos Voigt: “Many fashionable arguments concerning world history have reached us lately. (...) Maybe all this also influences the way in which we interpret tradition today . Ultimately, globalization has also become such a magic word nowadays. It is generally known that «traditions» should be viewed as the opposite pole of globalization, and their «conservation» is especially recommended in order to mitigate the adverse effects of globalization . Without thoroughly reviewing this entire topic, we can only allude to the fact that this
«anti-globalist» interpretation of traditions is now a worldwide phenomenon. We ourselves have imported this argumentation from abroad . Ironically, we could even add to it that it is typically a «global» phenomenon” (Voigt, 2007: 12).
1.4. The Rewriting of Folk Tradition
Vilmos Keszeg approaches the use of folk tradition and the habits of use associated with it from another direction . Relying mainly on the results of the French historians of literacy and of the anthropology of narration, the author searches for
an answer to the question whether oral tradition can be recorded and transferred from orality to scripturality . What are the consequences of the recording of traditions in writing? And what happens to tradition when it is transferred into a foreign medium and processed with the instruments of a style that is alien to it (Keszeg, 2005: 315–339; 2004: 36–467)? In his study, the author calls attention to the fact that tradition constructs itself upon 1 . a collective life-world, 2 . the local practices of discourse, 3 . a genealogical structure (tradition is assumed by the descendants) and a local structure (the community speaks about the same thing), and 4 . it has a biographical function as it regulates biographical pathways . These are all certainties that authenticate and legitimize tradition, whose function in its primary social context is to handle conflicts, strengthen identity consciousness, and continually produce and teach attitudes and habits . Tradition is simultaneously part and constructor of the life-world (see Keszeg, 2004: 437) . Recorded tradition is encountered in three possible statuses . These are: 1 . representation is the only form in which tradition is given, 2 . representation functions as a historical form of tradition, and 3 . representation does not remind us of tradition anymore, it works against tradition, and its reception and assessment happen according to the rules pertaining to literary texts (Keszeg, 2005: 316) . If this tradition is removed from its original context, another kind of linguistic behaviour and attitude becomes characteristic . On the one hand, in this context, tradition loses its relation to the life-world, it does not organize the world anymore, but only speaks about it, or, in other cases, that which has been reality in the original context becomes fiction during the process of rewriting (Keszeg, 2004: 437) .17 On the other hand, the author comes to the conclusion that the rewriting of tradition produces prejudices on all the levels of society, both within the local community and in the external world;
notwithstanding the fact that the causes for this differ from one social group to another (see Keszeg, 2005: 336) .
1.5. Folk Traditions on the Internet?
In the above paragraphs, I have presented four characteristic modes of existence of tradition and four characteristic contexts of its use . In their case, the local is transformed into a national or even universal tradition (world heritage), and its use can take place not only locally but also in alien contexts . Thus, the question emerges: what is new in the fact that folk tradition is localized on the Internet?
In my opinion, the interesting thing is not that the local tradition can spread globally through the Internet but that the folk tradition accessible through the Internet simultaneously becomes a uniformized content and part of the local
17 J . Lottman distinguishes between three types of texts: 1 . myths are about the absolute truth, texts that repeat themselves and create a world; 2 . history presents events in succession, but it does not create a world, it only talks about it; 3. the artistic text describes fiction (Lottman, 1994).
interpretations . Furthermore, the interesting aspect is that the previously orally recounted and/or scripturally recorded folk tradition is being represented virtually on the Internet (see Stanley, 2003) .
Folklorism references the fact that folk culture becomes part of the culture of the masses, and it does not play a role anymore in the regulation of local life, but it is prepared for consumption and is represented on the theatrical stage and in television and radio programmes. Some elements of tradition fulfil an instrumental role in the process of provoking aesthetic pleasure (cf . Keszeg, 2004: 437) . In the case of invented tradition, folk tradition becomes an instrument for another kind of manipulation and plays a role in the maintenance and legitimation of the ideologies of political power . Heritage is also the result of an editing process, but in this case traditions do not have to be lifted out from the twilight of the past, but its still existing elements have to be recombined in the present . New images and identities are produced through the combination of past and present, respectively their representation within the same horizon (cf . Gagyi, 2008: 16) . A common element in the latter two cases is that the intention of preserving the tradition is associated with central control and strong conservativism .
The written recording of traditions and its depositing into archives and publications represents a modality of its preservation and the externalization and transmission of heritage (patrimony) (Keszeg, 2011: 60) . This places the Internet that (also) presents the values of local culture into another context and shows it to be a driving force for the production of heritage . Thus, the World Wide Web becomes an active factor in the production and consumption process of heritage (see Falser and Juneja, 2013; Ioannides and Quak, 2014),18 an instrument for the awareness of our living together with the past, but one that is not characterized by the conservativism inherent in the attitudes based on the cultivation of folk tradition (see Nyíri, 1994a: 77) .
Thus, this heritage and this kind of heritage formation significantly differs from the ones we have been used to. As Zoltán Szűts also points out in his book, it is not too difficult to recognize that, “with the spread of technology, artefacts and objects do not appear anymore in contexts that barely change for centuries, as the role of museums and maps is taken over by augmented reality, and the collection is created by the community in a space in which the canons of social media are in effect. In this context, the role of the curator is fulfilled by the maker of the layer that is placed over reality” (Szűts, 2013: 202). And this maker is neither a scholar (ethnographer, anthropologist, etc.) nor a state official nor even a public educator or an enthusiastic amateur but the user himself (herself) .
At the same time, Internet forums and blogs make it possible for anyone to publicly speak about tradition, and due to the democratic character of these
18 For the relationship between the Internet and folk culture, see the studies published in the volume edited by Trevor J . Blank (2009) .
contexts specialists and laypeople can enjoy the same level of media representation (Szűts, 2013: 111–112).
The Internet as a context that carries traditional folk culture (cf. Szűts, 2013:
21) can be regarded as a new form of the cultivation and preservation of tradition in all of its aspects, in the case of which “the medium of the transmission, i .e . the digital platform itself, lacks any material substance . In the digital context, the information moves far away both from its source and its carrier . As we move away from the world of objects, the extent of unreliability, falsification, and copying also increases” (Szűts, 2013: 22.). In this medium, tradition increasingly becomes invented, or, more exactly, an interactive fiction (see Szűts, 2013: 97).
The preservation and/or use of tradition can be characterized with the metaphor of “saving” or “saving as” (in another format) (cf. Szűts, 2013: 23). That is to say, it is an adaptive practice through which the relocation of the tradition, stemming from the offline, local space, into the digital online space produces a kind of remix that is largely based on the recycling of already existing composing elements . In this case, the value added by the user exhausts itself in sharing and expressing his or her opinion about the shared content (Szűts, 2013: 145).19
2. Theoretical Reference Points
2.1. The Consequences of the Horizon Shift
According to Hermann Bausinger, the revaluation of space and the rediscovery of locations is the result of the shift (or decomposition) of the horizon . This process has brought about the spread of the current concept of homeland and the development of symbols that have enriched this concept with content . The birth of the concept of homeland is indicative of the fact that communities have become aware of the existence of others besides themselves . The tradition that they have viewed thus far as the organizing force of the entire world loses its general validity outside the boundaries of their community . The author emphasizes that the very existence of the innumerable local anniversaries celebrated nowadays refers back to local history (Bausinger, 1995: 81–83) .
Pierre Nora uses the term “realms of memory” to denote the procedures used for the anchoring of local history and traditions . He explains the development of these realms with the disappearance of the authentic contexts of memory (Nora, 2010: 13) . Besides the spatial and temporal constraints of memory, Jan
19 Zoltán Szűts repeatedly calls attention to the fact that the remix is an integral part of popular culture . In this case, “the author, having in view the receiver, creates a product that is often more readily receivable, or differently receivable, than the original” (Szűts, 2013: 110). In my opinion, this kind of creating an attitude is even more characteristic of Internet users .
Assmann also calls attention to its concrete character by stating that “ideas have to assume a perceptible form in order to gain entrance into memory,” and he uses the term “formations of memory” for this concreteness (Assmann, 1999:
38–39) . At the same time, this also means that memories are no longer preserved and transmitted by the communities but by institutions . Collective memory is substituted with cultural memory, which is aimed at the solid points of the past and transforms the factual past (history) into memorable past, or myth . Thus, the past is dissolved into symbolic formations (Assmann, 1999: 53) .
Arjun Appadurai uses the concept of locality for the description of the space that is delimited by horizons . According to him, “locality primarily means relations and contexts, not degrees and spatiality . It is a complex phenomenological quality that is produced by the feeling of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity, and the series of relations between the relativized contexts”
(Appadurai, 2001: 3) .
The shift of the horizon also influences the view of temporality: the dread of the future and the longing for the past leads to the absolutization of the present . Thus, the orientation towards the future is substituted by presentism, the cult of the present that continues to preserve the relics of the past . However, this is a present that has already passed before it could happen completely . So, the faith in progress is replaced by the concern for preservation . Nevertheless, it still remains questionable what is to be preserved and by whom (see Hartog, 2006) . The rapid development and spread of Internet technology has given a new impetus to the above-mentioned concepts and theories by placing them in a wider context .
The phenomenon of the narrowing of space, which is discussed by Hermann Bausinger, can also be interpreted as an answer to the accessibility of the cultural products of the folk and to the fastening pace of this accessibility . In a context in which radically different goods appear in a rapidly changing series, tradition can only be preserved if the forms become rigid and are then adopted with maximum precision (Bausinger, 1995: 111) . In the case of the invented tradition and heritage, the invented/patrimonialized traditions and models have to be followed this rigorously . Bausinger invokes the example of the native costumes that, according to him, strongly resemble uniforms (Bausinger, 1995: 114) . This tendency is even more pronounced nowadays. It suffices to think of the costumes of folk dance ensembles or the costume elements of master craftsmen of folk arts, also popularized on the Internet .
2.2. The Changing Function of the Archives: From Preservation to Sharing The computer is an instrument of visual acquisition (and propagation) of knowledge . Its use resembles more closely that of the telescope and the microscope than of the printed press . That is to say, representation (or visualization) is that
which is more important in the case of the Internet and not its capacity to store data (Stanley, 2003) . Nevertheless, from a certain perspective, it seems that the World Wide Web is also a huge archive, or database, for a very significant part of the users .20 Thus, all the theoretical considerations that pertain to the nature of the archives (databases, records, libraries, etc .) are also valid, or at least worthy of consideration, in the case of the structure, functioning, and especially the use of the Internet .
In his book about the “art of forgetting,” Harald Weinrich describes the archive as an “institution for the preservation of documents,” in which “the written material that documents legal and state administrative procedures [ . . .] is at disposal as a model: it serves as a reference for future objectives, including historiographical ones” (Weinrich, 2002: 297) . At the same time, the author calls attention to the fact that in our present “overinformed society” the selection of information is a much more difficult and important task than its acquisition, which in the case of the archives means “the systematic destruction of documents,” also called
“annulment” (Kassation) (Weinrich, 2002: 297–298) .
Similarly to the archive, the library is also a response to the theoretical question about the possibility and the method of the written word’s systematization and about the possibility of controlling the ever-expanding world of books (Chartier 1994: vii). In his study about the function fulfilled by libraries within Transylvanian Hungarian culture, Zsigmond Jakó emphasizes the fact that the library can be viewed as a social construction that requires the simultaneous presence of certain social needs and conditions for its formation . Therefore, its content and composition are defined by the cultural and, we should add, economic, life of the social community that creates the library (Jakó, 1977: 284–285) .
Reflecting on the current problems of archives, Tibor Takács states that the archive not only bears upon itself, but it occasionally also shakes off the burden of history that has been thrust upon it by political power and historiography . Exiting the archive, the archival document can function not only as a historical source but can also enter into various contexts such as the official, the personal historiographical, or even the literary context (Takács, 2009: 62–63) . This is of particular importance to me, since ultimately it defines those three essential media or contexts in which the World Wide Web and the information that can be found on it fulfil their function.
The user of the archive (the ethnographical writer, the historian, the local specialist, or the private person) experiences there not only the past but also
20 In his work about the relationship between history and computerized representation, Stanley writes that historians are conservative computer users (which is also true about the representatives of the humanities and the majority of average computer users) . They primarily use it as a typewriter and an archive, and written history (viz . folk tradition) transforms itself only very slowly into represented history (folk tradition) (Stanley, 2003) .
solitude . Relying on Steedman’s work, Tibor Takács argues that the user of the archives is motivated by the desire of knowing the past and taking it into possession since “in the past we are looking for that which we want to become”
(Takács, 2009: 63) . Thus, the archive is also a space of desires, “a place where people can remain alone with the past and where an entire world, a complete social regime can be imagined on the basis of a scrap of paper” (Takács, 2009:
64) . Going even further, I could say that the user experiences himself (or herself) in the archive, as he or she also does on the Internet (e .g . social networking sites) .
Pierre Nora, the author behind the great research project related to the places of memory, discusses in no less than two studies the archive as a “lieu de mémoire”
(Nora, 2006: 4–6; 2010: 121–128) . He manages to show that the extension of the concept and the debates about research rights and the maintenance (i .e . control) of the archives point to their central position within contemporary memory (Nora, 2006: 4). On the one hand, the memorial and identificatory function of the archive surpasses in importance its historical and documentary function, while, on the other hand, the increase in historical sensibility and the pluralization of history have also resulted in an increase in the modalities of access . The function of the archive as a place of memory has been extended so that it also functions as a place of regional, local, and personal (that is to say, alternative) form of memory, besides the national one (Nora, 2006: 5) .
This transformation of the archives manifests itself in three domains: “in the process of decentralization, in the expansion of the circle of things that seem worth it to be remembered, and in the process of democratization that makes everybody his or her own archivist” . This is the source of the quantitative revolution of the archives (Nora, 2006: 5) . In many respects, the archive conserves the temporality of the state, the long-term processes, and offers the condition of possibility for its representation .
In his study entitled Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Jacques Derrida writes that, on the one hand, the archive can be conceived of as a guarantor of repeatability, recordability, and of the remembrance of the origins; on the other hand, these levels of meaning are also associated with collecting, categorizing, and regulating as the tropes of control (Derrida, 2008) . At the same time, the title already outlines the fact that, “according to Derrida, the technique of archiving as a political and institutional instrument, on the one hand, and the terminological considerations of Freudian psychoanalysis, on the other hand, can be placed upon a common register . In Derrida’s opinion, the interpretation of the act of archiving as repression can serve as the point of intersection of the explanations of archivology, inspired by cultural science and psychoanalysis . The inseminating demand of archiving acts as a desire in the mirror of the previously incalculable an/archiving event because the trauma that is imprinted into human consciousness has to break free to the surface . For Freud, the logic of
repetition as neurotic compulsion is inseparable from the destructive propensity of the death wish . One could argue that the ancestral principle of destruction generates the excruciating desire of the archive. «The archive always works, and a priori, against itself» because it always counts with the element of that which is infinite and impossible to delimit” (Miklósvölgyi, 2008).
Michel Foucault extends the concept of the archive in his work entitled The Archaeology of Knowledge (Foucault 2001) . He describes the archive primarily as a system that is responsible for regulating the appearance and functioning of statements. In this view, the archive is not a mere static deposit of a fixed medium but one in which information continuously fluctuates and whose functioning is also influenced by the dominant discourses of power (see Hermann, 2010;
Miklósvölgyi, 2008). According to this definition, the archive can be conceived of as an interface between different bundles of information, or as their metaphor, especially as the etymology of the word “metaphor” also carries in it the element of transfer and transportation (Miklósvölgyi, 2008) . According to Zsolt Miklósvölgyi,
“the media archives of the present do not so much store as transmit information . In the age of digital culture, the archive has to be thought of entropically, as part of an impenetrable, open and process-centred network, in which we have to permit the maximum level of chaos . By liberating the bureaucratic archaism of the previous concept of the archive, we can make possible the free proliferation of various open-network architectures . Thus, it becomes questionable if we should call the depositing medium itself or the totality of the data contained in it the archive” (Miklósvölgyi, 2008) .
Media archaeology studies, among other things, the new kinds of relationships and phenomena that are formed during the virtualization of real containing media (Miklósvölgyi, 2008) . This is the direction from which the German media theoretician Wolfgang Ernst approaches the subject in his study about the cybernetics of archives (Wolfgang, 2008), Das Rumoren der Archive (“Archive Rumblings”), rethinking it from the perspective of technical innovations, digital technologies, and the habits of media consumption . His conclusion is that “in the 21st century, media archaeology ( . . .) goes beyond the classic systems of archives and archiving. Its advantage can be sought in the specific character of the conveying medium: in the possibility of digital encoding and its continuity . The function fulfilled by the media archives of the present does not exhaust itself in mere transmission . This differentiation is similar to the one observed in the case of the archive and cultural memory, or the archives and their media . One of the most important contributions of the digital world consists in incompleteness or, if you wish, in unsystemacity” (Hermann, 2010) .
The American art and media theoretician W . J . T . Mitchell also emphasizes this disorganization associated with the surge in intensity of the flow of information.
According to him, “previously, the main objective and task of the archive consisted
in preservation and storage, which presupposed the writability of history, while today our task is precisely the deconstruction of these, and its essence consists in the adaptation of chaos” (Hermann, 2010) .
At the same time, the most important characteristic of the World Wide Web archive as a form of technology and as a system of technological knowledge that operates its functioning consists in the fact that the electronic archive depends upon electricity and the Internet . In the case of a power outage, the entire system becomes paralysed . Its users are left only with the ideas, but they cannot completely access the techniques for their implementation . As opposed to the other kinds of archives, the information stored on the Internet does not have any materiality;
the information is encoded not in material form but in bytes . Immateriality also contains the “unbearable lightness” of annihilation (or, if you wish, forgetting) . As easy and as fast as websites and Internet interfaces offering the possibility of storage, organization, and display of vast amounts of information according to different criteria are being born, as quickly do they also disappear . And yet another important consideration: because the information is not systematically organized, search results are mostly contingent and accidental .
2.3. The Internet as a Centreless System
In his monograph on the nature of the World Wide Web, László Ropolyi analyses the Internet as technology according to its material, as communication according to its dynamic, as culture according to its form, and as an organism according to its objectives (Ropolyi, 2003) . Deleuze uses the term “assemblage” for those particular multiplicities and conglomerates formed on the basis of the fitting together of different parts, which are always centreless, open in all directions and whose every element relates to all the others . These are not systems based on hierarchy and regulatory forms of memory lacking central control . They lack any central automatism and are only determined by the flow of different states.
Additionally, they also lack a beginning and an end, and their countless links make it possible for the multiplicity to be governed not by a predetermined centre but to move in always new directions, to change and increase its dimensions (Deleuze and Guattari, 2002) .
In his book about current society and its functioning, DeLanda uses the concept of network and that of assemblage as more or less interchangeable synonyms (DeLanda, 2006) . Following his ideas, I hold that this concept can also be used to describe the nature of the Internet . This is even more so the case since the main thesis of László Ropolyi’s monograph is that the sole and privileged version of knowledge characteristic of modernity comes to a crisis in the age of the Internet, and our interlinked social existence (“web- being”) facilitates the appearance of a previously unimaginable multiplicity
of different versions of knowledge and alternative spheres of reality . During their postmodern individualization, people begin to relate personally also to scientific and technical knowledge (Ropolyi, 2006).
If patrimonialization, the invention of tradition, and folklorism presuppose a central controlling organ and central regulation, in the case of the Internet we do not have any of these . At the same time, since the folk tradition uploaded to the Internet can be continually updated, just as any other content (see Nyíri, 1994b:
19), the knowledge that is brought to a fixed form within theatrical performances, tourism, or the archives (and this observation is also true for invented tradition and heritage) comes to life again on the Internet and, in a certain sense, reclaims its variability .
2.4. The Internet and the longue durée
Sticking to the categorization of duration introduced by Braudel (see Braudel, 1972: 988–1012), one can most frequently encounter short duration, a temporality of the events that can be experienced . In order to better understand this, we have to take a step back . The author has created the concept of the short duration as the conceptual opposite of the longue durée that he considers more important from the perspective of the historiographer’s work . In his interpretation, the long duration does not refer to the length of the period; rather, it denotes the rhythm of the development . It expresses something about the relationship between the surrounding natural landscape and man, which has only changed very slightly during the centuries . As opposed to this, short duration represents the temporality of the “tumultuous surface,” the temporality of events, defined by speed, variability, and pulsation . Short duration refers to the individuals and their experiences and does not merely mean a short (time)span but also the dispersion of time (history/tradition), in which chance also plays a major role . Thus, when I affirm that the Internet can be studied from the perspective of short duration, I do not only refer to the fact that the majority of the contents uploaded to the Internet reflects the experiences and the momentary mood of the individual, but I also mean that these contents move at a very fast and random pace: they appear, gain huge popularity in short time, and become obsolete and/or are deleted just as fast . At the same time, since all this is played out on levels very close to the surface, in most cases, it also hides from us that which is inherited from the past unnoticed and unchanged and principally characterizes our culture, i .e . that which plays itself out on the deeper (structural) level .
